Oh my love, I know you are the Candy Man

[gamemakers]

Although the mood in the Capitol is...taut, once the Tributes are in the transportation craft, things seem to lighten. The peacekeepers almost seem jovial - as jovial as peacekeepers ever seem. About half the Tributes are checked over and given an injection into their tracking device.

In the underground room, the stylists have all their prep teams running busy, dressing up the tributes in bright costumes, chatting with each other, clearly excited to have so much freedom over what their Tributes are wearing in. Each one is dressed in a personalized costume, elaborate, and entirely soft.

Finally the Tributes are placed on their pedestals and sent on up, all gussied up.

25 - 24 - 23

The light is blinding for a moment, before the candy-colored world around them comes into focus. And it's not just candy-colored - it is actually candy. Some Tributes might be reminded of the game Candy Land, if it was something in their home world. Music plays, scarily cute animals roam, and every thing just looks so gosh-darn happy.

20 - 19 - 18 - 17 - 16

The Cornucopia sits, candy-striped itself, and over-flowing with a generous bounty of food, weapons, and supplies. Even these all reflect the nature of the arena, brightly-colored, and cheerful-looking, just begging to be gathered up.

11- 10 - 9 - 8

They've all been warned not to step off their pedestal early. But as the final number ticks off, those Tributes that had their tracking devices adjusted in the transport suddenly feel a sting starting in their arms. A slightly diluted version of what Ariadne was given the day before is dumped in their veins.

The dilution doesn't help them, of course; it just causes the poison to take effect more slowly.

5 - 4

3

2

1

Go.

The burning is starting for half of them, spreading through their body, lighting their nerves on fire. Within 10 minutes it's effecting their motor skills, causing them to stagger, twitch, to move against their will.

Those who are small fall faster, barely lasting 15 minutes in the bloodbath. The stronger and bigger among them might make it 30 minutes at most.

By the time the bloodbath is over, the Cornucopia is surrounded by corpses. Half of the Tributes have fallen without even a single competitor having to touch them.


[OOC: Don't forget the OOC Arena post, especially those of you running for the Cornucopia. Every Tribute must post to this post. There will be a Cornucopia thread, and anyone else feel free to post as you will. Please add a tag with your character's name.

Those who were poisoned are anyone in group 2. You will have a second post up shortly.]

Comments

[thefemaleson]

"Some what?" Oscar asks, the unfamiliar term being the first thing her pain-affected mind manages to process. Her knees start to buckle, and she stumbles forward a half step before managing to bring herself back under control. Then the rest of what the other woman had said finally penetrats, and she lets out a harsh, sardonic laugh. "Fair?" she says, expression incredulous. "All of this," she makes a wide, encompassing gesture "And it's poison you think is unfair?"

[skinlotion]

”Medicine,” she grinds out, not quite politely; it’s a lot harder to care about those sorts of things when all she wants to do is die. She balls her hands into fists, hunched over and glaring, trying to make herself straighten up and not anywhere close to being able to do it. She might be so past giving a shit about putting on the dopey stupid popular girl face, but she’s not ready to play all her cards yet, and so she forces herself to say, “It’s all unfair. I want to go home.”

She does, to be fair, want to go home.

[thefemaleson]

One of the things Oscar is quickly learning about dying is how it makes a lot of things rather funny. Like this other woman's whining. She laughs, though the sound is cut short by another wave of burning pain that forces her to double over in agony. Normally this sort of whining would annoy her - it always had at court, the ladies fussing and fretting with each other whenever anything didn't go their way.

"Get used to it, Madame" she says, through shallow breaths and spikes of pain. "They care little here about what we want as long as we provide their blood sport."

[skinlotion]

She's had a lot of time over the years to get over the idea of people laughing at her, but it's still a little raw, finding herself in a new place with new strangers who are still laughing. She digs her fingers into the palm of her hand, trying to focus on the sharp pain instead of the one from the poison.

It isn't working.

"I'm not gonna," she mutters to herself, because she's going to get out of this. She has to. "And poison is a shitty blood sport." That, she says louder, yelling to the ground.

[thefemaleson]

"I do not think," Oscar says between ragged gasps for air "That this..." She flaps a hand towards herself and then the other women to generally indicate the poison, "This isn't how it usually goes."

As if to punctuate her words, her legs choose this moment to give out completely, and she crumples to the ground. To her credit, she pushes herself into a roughly sitting position almost immediately. "Rage against the heavens all you like, Madame. It'll only kill you that much faster"

[skinlotion]

She doesn't deal with losing particularly well. This has never been a problem, because she doesn't lose. She'll take her hits when she has to, but it's all a part of the plan, and it doesn't count as losing when you're just doing it to get other people's guards down. It's all about control, and she's always had a lot of it. So, when push comes to shove, it turns out she's not a particularly graceful loser.

She couldn't care less about the other girl's problems-- nice enough that this is unusual, but that doesn't change her situation now, when she has to make an impression. It's all she can do to keep standing, and she has to land on her knees before she topples head-first into the ground, catching herself on her hands and trying to tear up the stupid ground under her fingers as she screams again in rage. Her head shoots up for a fraction of a second to glare, enough to insist that she doesn't need the permission, without enough sense to devote to actually saying it, too consumed by the temper and the poison.